യമകൃതം ജഗന്നാഥസ്തോത്രമ്

Yama's praise of Jagannatha, from the second chapter of the Purushottama Mahatmya in the Vaishnava Khanda of the Skanda Purana, and it enters at the sixteenth verse where the chapter puts it. Its opening image is the old one and still the best: all this is strung upon you as beads are strung upon a thread; by you it is held, by you made, by you nourished. What follows salutes him through the avataras — the boar who lifted the earth on his tusk, three-Veda-bodied, with sun and moon and fire for eyes; Narasimha, whose terrible tusked form scattered the enemy — before arriving at the form the hymn is really for: dark as a rain-cloud, his body the blue gemstone itself, dwelling in the cave of the Blue Mountain. It ends by turning from him to Lakshmi, who rests always on his breast, and bowing to her.